VINIL Universal Records DAngelo - Voodoo

2000

Pitchfork : "Twelve years since D'Angelo released his dirt-encrusted soul opus in the first month of the new millennium, we have yet to see a follow-up. Heard now on this 2xLP reissue, Voodoo still stands as a paranoid, mysterious, and challenging statement that somehow managed to scale the industry.

t's impossible to talk about Voodoo without talking about what's happened since Voodoo. Or, more accurately, what hasn't happened since Voodoo. It's been 12 years since D'Angelo released his dirt-encrusted soul opus in the first month of the new millennium, and we have yet to see a follow-up. During those dozen calendar runs, the Virginia-bred singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer has learned to play guitar and spent countless hours in various studios, trying to find his way to the next sound. This time last year, unofficial D'Angelo status updater and kindred spirit/collaborator ?uestlove told me the new album is "pretty much 97% done." And this year, D played a number of live shows, his first in a decade. That's the upside.

He's also been arrested-- for disturbing the peace, marijuana possession, carrying a concealed weapon, and driving under the influence in 2005, and then for offering an undercover NYPD officer $40 for a blowjob in 2010. There were several attempts at rehab. And he's almost died at least once, when he drunkenly crashed through a fence and flipped his Hummer alongside Virginia's Route 711 seven years ago. In 2010, when I asked ?uestlove how his friend stacks up against the other luminaries he's worked with-- people like Jay-Z and Al Green-- he summed up the D'Angelo dilemma well: "I consider him a genius beyond words. At the same time, I say to myself, 'How can I scream someone's genius if they hardly have any work to show for it?' Then again, the last work he did was so powerful that it's lasted 10 years."

Billboard : D'Angelo's Voodoo, which turns 15 on Sunday, is one of these albums -- the story behind it is the musical equivalent of a fairytale, with each plot point proving an important lesson. The album came together through endless late-night jam sessions, showing that effort and persistence pay off. A group of musicians with impressive résumés put aside ego in pursuit of a common goal, simultaneously creating a classic and demonstrating the virtues of teamwork.

Voodoo's myth is also helped by its status as the defining statement of the neo-soul movement. Like so many genre names, "neo-soul" proved easy to latch on to but not very accurate, conflating a lot of different artists in a way that ultimately proved detrimental. Some artists included under the umbrella of neo-soul, like Bilal, even seemed held back by the movement's mandate -- his 2013 album A Love Surreal was far more daring than his early work.

But the term didn't hamstring D'Angelo, and Voodoo is one of the few records associated with neo-soul that hold up outside of the period when that descriptor was popular. Of course, the album's legend was also burnished by the fact that it was the last full-length D'Angelo put out until Dec. 15, 2014. It took 14 years, 10 months, and 20 days for a follow-upto hit the stores.

The most important artists merge their unique, idiosyncratic visions with popular success. This is especially true of all the figures D'Angelo admires -- the people Questlove famously described as "Yoda's" in an interview with Toure (a group that includes James Brown, Al Green, Joni Mitchell, and Prince). Voodoo represents D's ticket into the Yoda club. The album pulled in two Grammy's, spawned a hit in "Untitled," and earned a platinum certification. It showed up on numerous critics' year-end-lists in 2000. In 2013, Bob Christgau wrote that Voodoo is "widely regarded as the greatest R&B album of the post-Prince era." The record maintained this status until recently, when D'Angelo struck again."